Did you hear the one about how the shit is finally hitting the fan for Cambridge Analytica, the skeevy weird data company Donald Trump’s campaign used to help him steal the election? Of course you did, we just wrote about it! Ah, Cambridge Analytica, the weird company Steve Bannon was on the board of, the one whose US address was the same as the address for Breitbart and all of Steve Bannon’s other fucked up loser ventures!

Channel 4 in Merry Olde Englande is releasing a series of mini-documentaries on Cambridge Analytica’s work, because apparently the Deep State had a meeting and decided this week was LET’S FUCK UP CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA WEEK. The first segment focused on CA whistleblower Christopher Wylie, who is speaking out about the “frankenmonster” he created for CA, the tool that was used to harvest millions of Americans’ Facebook data, so that the Trump campaign could in turn micro-target those people with lies, damned lies, and #TrumpFacts, possibly with Russia’s help.

Part two, which has just aired in the UK, is about another side of CA’s “data” operation, one that doesn’t seem to be about data at all! In secretly recorded conversations with people like Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix, we learn about how CA helps candidates around the world, like by bribing their opponents and sending them hookers.

Channel 4 went undercover as Fake Sri Lankans, pretending to want to hire CA for Fake Sri Lanka Elections. And in so doing, they heard SOME STUFF.

In essence, Channel 4 totally James O’Keefe-d Cambridge Analytica, but correctly, without doing the part O’Keefe does where he just cold makes up shit and every single one of his exclusive reports is giggled off the internet about 11 seconds after it’s released. The first CA people they met with were a couple of CA bigwigs named Alex Tayler and Mark Turnbull, and it wasn’t too hard to get them to spill! Asked about the data mining stuff, Turnbull emphasized that CA isn’t looking to insert true information into a debate, but rather to play off people’s fears and emotions, which in the case of the Trump campaign, means “racism”:

… [W]e just put information into the bloodstream of the internet, and then, and then watch it grow, give it a little push every now and again … like a remote control. It has to happen without anyone thinking, “that’s propaganda,” because the moment you think “That’s propaganda,” the next question is, “Who’s put that out?”

After that the Fake Sri Lankans asked, “And can you help us get dirt on Hillary Clinton, we mean Sammy From Sri Lanka?” YOU BET THEY CAN! Cambridge Analytica has “people” for that. They are ex-spies.

Cambridge Analytica has no problem with “wad[ing] into a foreign election,” because they know they can “disappear without a trace” afterward, as Channel 4’s reporter put it. And what of laws about foreign interference in elections, or if you just don’t want people to know Cambridge Analytica did your dirty work? There’s a fucked up workaround for that, of course. Here’s Turnbull:

It may be that we have to contract under a different name. A different entity, with a different name, so that no record exists with our name attached to this at all.

Turnbull also said his company doesn’t do “fake news” or “lying” or “making stuff up,” to which we reply that you motherfuckers had STEVE FUCKING BANNON ON YOUR BOARD, SO SUCK OUR DICKS FOR A GOOD SOLID TEN MINUTES. He also says they don’t do “entrapment,” mm hmm yup sure.

Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix appeared later in the video to say all the shit Mark Turnbull said is fake news:

I mean, deep digging is interesting, you know, but equally effective can be just to go and speak to the incumbents and to offer them a deal that’s too good to be true …

Like a bribe?????

… and make sure that’s video-recorded, you know …

THE WAY ALEXANDER NIX IS BEING VIDEO RECORDED RIGHT NOW? LOLOL!

… these sorts of tactics are very effective, instantly having video evidence of corruption …

A little later, Nix talked about other ways to entrap people:

Send some girls around to the candidate’s house […] just saying we could bring some Ukrainians in on holiday with us, you know […] They are very beautiful, I find that works pretty well!

Pee hookers, maybe!

And what about fake news and stuff, Alexander Nix?

I mean, it sounds a dreadful thing to say …

It does.

… but these are things that don’t necessarily need to be true, as long as they’re believed.

In response to this obvious fake news report, Cambridge Analytica said that despite how they got caught on tape admitting to using bribes, honey-traps and entrapment, they do not EVER use bribes or honey-traps or entrapment. Moreover, they said they only talk about those things to find out if their prospective clients are gross and bad people who want to do gross and bad things. No, honest, they fucking said that:

We entirely refute any allegation that Cambridge Analytica or any of its affiliates use entrapment, bribes, or so-called “honey-traps” for any purpose whatsoever … We routinely undertake conversations with prospective clients to try to tease out any unethical or illegal intentions …

AND NO FAKE NEWS.

Kids, Channel 4 is not done. The next installment of this report comes out tomorrow, and it is specifically about Cambridge Analytica’s actions in America. OH BOY!

Did you miss Part 1 of the series? Of course you did! Here it is:

Nice people Donald Trump and Steve Bannon hang out with. Maybe when Kamala Harris is president we can put them wherever you put people you LOCK UP.

Laugh and chortle and be merry, our global nightmare is almost over, and it is your OPEN THREAD.

Being pretty means never having to say you’re sorry. And Hope Hicks is very, very pretty. Last night’s NYMag profile of Hicks by Olivia Nuzzi is hilarious — Hope did not enjoy working in the White House “surrounded by eccentrics, maniacs, divas, and guys from the Republican National Committee who seemed to think they were managing a Best Buy in Kenosha” — and deliciously gossipy, but it’s not exactly holding Hope’s stilettos to the fire. So instead of our usual Wonkette Seekrit Chatcave ritual where everyone murmurs, “Awwww, poor Hopey,” only to have Yr FDF shout, “OMG! Shut up! Just ’cause she’s pretty and white doesn’t mean she’s any less fucking guilty than the rest of those criminals,” today’s Hope piece is being written by the one writer at this here recipeblog who thinks that bitch needs to go straight to jail with the rest of ’em!

She may have obstructed justice, but gosh darnit, she’s so sincere!

Hicks took out one of her notebooks, black leather with the Trump name embossed in gold on the front. She’d prayed a lot over the weekend, and also written two lists in the same bubbly print that had recently been photographed on a note card in Trump’s hand, reminding him to tell survivors of a school shooting, among other things, “I hear you.” One list contained reasons to resign as White House communications director immediately; the other, reasons to wait to resign. Not resigning at all wasn’t a consideration.

No, we are not getting sucked into the Dear Diary of a grown-ass woman who participated in destroying the country. It’s the White House, not the fucking babysitters club. OR IT SHOULD BE.

She talks just like her asshole boss.

Not that she’s, like, concerned with icky politics or anything. Anyway, it sounds so sweet coming out of her pretty mouth!

To Hicks, the president’s policies were secondary considerations — the man himself came first. And at the end of the day, she really liked him. “Part of it is because of the proximity,” a source close to her said, “part of it is human nature.” She even sounded a little like him sometimes, uttering words like loser in her sugary voice.

And, yeah. She did stonewall a congressional investigation and admit to telling “White Lies” for her boss. But, how was she to know she’d have to testify for Congress when she agreed to work for the president?

She didn’t overanalyze her decision to join the campaign, thinking of it almost the way you’d think about a semester studying abroad. “The feeling was, You know what? I’m just going to roll with it. Let’s see what happens until the election,” a source who has known her since before the campaign told me. “She wasn’t someone who was in it for the politics. She was in it because of the person, and the relationship with the family, and the experience.”

Hope’s just a girl in the world.

A girl who likes mints, and working out, and bakes cookies at Valentine’s Day with handwritten notes saying, “Believe in Love.” And if her messy personal life led to the unraveling of the White House, well oooopsie! Hey, don’t blame poor Hopey with the good hair.

See it all started during the campaign when Hope, who has a soft spot for bad boys, aka dangerous fucking assholes, started dating campaign thug Corey Lewandowski. Pro tip: If you don’t want people to shame you for dating a married guy, make sure to have long legs and impeccable brows.

So after Hope broke it off with Corey, and Her Real Daddy comforted her by calling her “the best piece of tail” old Corey would ever have, she took up with serial wifebeater Rob Porter. And this caused Lewandowski to lose his shit.

“He has, sort of, Single White Male characteristics,” a source who had worked with Hicks before the campaign told me. In the fall, he began asking around, trying to figure out whom she was dating. “I think that he thinks he should control her,” a second source said. “He got wind that she was dating Porter, and he could not handle that,” a third source, who is close to the White House and worked with Lewandowski, said. “There were still raw feelings.”

Was Lewandowski behind the media reports of Porter’s violence towards his ex-wives? Maaaaybe! Lewandowski’s pal Chuck Johnson doesn’t know what he’s “allowed to say” about the process by which David Martosko, formerly of the Daily Caller, came to publish the Porter story in The Daily Mail. But if the domestic violence story got Porter fired before morphing into a story about Porter’s security clearance, which provoked the whole crisis over West Wing security clearances, which led to Javanka and all the rest of the goons losing their “temporary” clearances, which led to Peter Navarro sneaking back into the Oval Office to hawk his batshit trade theories, which led to a trade war, well … can you blame poor, innocent Hope?

No. No, you can’t. But no one gets to come out of this burning trash heap smelling like those pale-pink roses on Hope’s desk. Not even Hope Fucking Hicks!

White Privilege, HOW DOES IT WORK?

Oh, you want gossip now?

Okay, fair enough.

The Mooch is “obsessed with astrology and the word fuck.”

The president is really a champion of women, “especially if he’s not banging them. Because, like a lot of men but more so, Trump really does compartmentalize the sex and the emotional part.”

After getting photographed making out in a cab with Rob Porter and having her sexxxxxy texts with the Mormon wifebeater leaked to her boss, Hope did finally come clean to Don McGahn about the relationship. And she tipped him off about her boyfriend’s little problem with his ex-wives. Which he already knew, but whatever. Extra brownie points for Little Miss’s candor, we guess?

Hope is Trump’s TRUE DAUGHTER, unlike Ivanka who, “understands that her father is gonna be dead in ten years.”

And the biggest fucking asshole in the West Wing, aside from The Asshole in Chief is ….

DRUMROLL, PLEASE!

John Kelly! Yeah, shocker. Apparently, Kelly dictated that statement calling Porter “a man of true integrity” all by himself. When the media blamed Hicks for talking up her wifebeating boyfriend, Kelly let her take the fall for it. And for a moment, Yr FDF actually felt sorry for Hope.

]]>https://wonkette.com/631436/my-goodness-why-are-we-being-so-mean-to-that-nice-hope-hicks/feed344Yay, Ryan Zinke Just Saved The Endangered Animals By Letting Trump Sons Murder Them More!https://wonkette.com/631443/yay-ryan-zinke-just-saved-the-endangered-animals-by-letting-trump-sons-murder-them-more
https://wonkette.com/631443/yay-ryan-zinke-just-saved-the-endangered-animals-by-letting-trump-sons-murder-them-more#commentsMon, 19 Mar 2018 19:46:02 +0000https://wonkette.com/?p=631443Is this some kind of GAME? Do I AMUSE you?

Not long ago, we learned that even though Donald Trump has called big game hunting a “horror show,” Ryan Zinke’s Interior Department would nonetheless allow Trump’s stupid disgusting animal-killing sons — and anyone else with lots of money — to import trophies of endangered animals they’ve killed, just as long as they pinkie swear the hunt in some way was useful to preserving the species. Last week, we got an important insight into how such wise decisions on killing threatened critters came about: Just as climate destruction policy is being set by Big Oil and Big Coal, the rules on importing trophies are being rewritten by Big Game hunters:

A review by The Associated Press of the backgrounds and social media posts of the 16 board members appointed by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke indicates they will agree with his position that the best way to protect critically threatened or endangered species is by encouraging wealthy Americans to shoot some of them.

One appointee co-owns a private New York hunting preserve with Trump’s adult sons.

The new committee, the International Wildlife “Conservation” Council, held its first meeting Friday. Possibly at a shooting range. Where everyone was encouraged to wear a pith helmet. Zinke, not surprisingly, is a big fan of the manly art of hunting, and since Barack Obama’s administration put rules in place to limit importation of corpses of endangered animals, that alone is an excellent reason to roll them back.

African big-game hunting is a sport for the very rich; safaris can run $50K for a couple of weeks, and that’s great, because, you see, the idea is that the money goes to protect habitats, hire rangers and wildlife preservation experts, and create jobs for people to help Drunk Bwana bag that lion or elephant. Zinke lauded the plans for the advisory board last year, saying in a statement:

This council will provide important insight into the ways that American sportsmen and women benefit international conservation from boosting economies and creating hundreds of jobs to enhancing wildlife conservation.

Inspired by Zinke’s proclamation, The North American Federation of Foxes immediately got to work on a proposal for providing henhouse security.

Wouldn’t you know it, stupid granola-munching environmentalists pointed out that foreign countries could create even more jobs with photo safaris, and that big game hunters don’t so much “improve” threatened species by taking weaker specimens — a job that Nature, Red In Tooth And Claw, LLC, is already quite good at — but that the mighty Nimrods tend to “target the biggest and strongest animals, weakening already vulnerable populations.” Yeah, but that gives some of those beta lions a chance to step up to the challenge and get big and strong enough to get shot themselves, don’t you cucks understand anything about evolution?

The members of the new commission run the gamut from people who fukken love hunting to people who REALLY FUKKEN LOVE HUNTING:

Almost all of them are members of Safari Club International and the NRA, which have both pushed lawsuits against the old-style Interior Department’s silly rules against shooting everything that moves. A surprising member also belong to the Spearmint Rhino Gentleman’s Club, where at least they aren’t allowed to shoot any of the strippers. THAT WE KNOW OF.

In a paragraph strangely reminiscent of Princess Leia warning Darth Vader that he’ll be in big trouble for seizing a diplomatic ship, WaPo notes:

In a letter this week, a coalition of more than 20 environmental and animal welfare groups objected that the one-sided makeup of the council could violate the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which requires government boards to be balanced in terms of points of view and not improperly influenced by special interests.

We find that quaintly optimistic, a bit like the time a baby jaguar looked pleadingly into Eric Trump’s sneering face before he blew it away.

Still, Interior Department spokesperson Heather Swift, for the sake of “appearances,” responded to the little titty-baby Bambi-huggers, patiently explaining the council includes folks who “represent all areas of conservation and varying opinions.” Which is true! The panel really is quite diverse, since its members like killing all sorts of critters. Plus, we already said the council includes both bow AND gun manufacturers. What do these greenie freaks want, a token boomerang or atlatl maker?

Lots of proficient killmongers on the council, including one Safari Club dude who, according to the Humane Society, “has logged nearly 500 kills — including at least 18 lions, 13 leopards, six elephants and two rhinos.” And now, he will go after the most challenging game of all: federal policy.

There’s also Don Junior’s personal friend, Keith Mark, who does a shooting animals TV show and also is a hunting guide. He seems nice!

He helped organize Sportsmen for Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign and recently posted photos on his Twitter page of himself with Trump Jr. and Zinke, standing before an array of mounted big-horn sheep and a bear.

“I see the world from a hunting lifestyle,” Mark told the AP, adding that he has no preconceived agenda for his service on the conservation council. “It’s the most pure form of hands-on conservation that there is. I will approach all decision-making with my background.”

In accordance with its mandate, the International Wildlife Conservation Council’s eventual written report will be shot, stuffed, and mounted on the wall of a hunting lodge in Montana.

If you are a common non-math nerd, you might be tempted to click “close tab” when stories get into the weeds about the Trump campaign data operation, and how it worked (maybe with Russia!) to steal the election for President Orange Lumps. Don’t do that this time, we promise we will make this interesting!

To briefly recap, Cambridge Analytica is the weird data firm based in the UK, funded liberally by the uber-wingnut mega-gazillionaire Mercer family, which worked with the Trump campaign to use Facebook to convince Nanas and little brothers all across America that Hillary Clinton was the devil incarnate. Steve Bannon was on its board! CA also notably reached out to Russian intelligence front WikiLeaks during the campaign, just to offer some help in filing and categorizing all the dirty Russian-hacked Hillary Clinton emails. We have always, since the very beginning, suspected that CA was an important player in the hacked email operation, perhaps maybe using stolen voter data from Russia’s Alfa Bank, laundered through the DeVos family’s Spectrum Health and the Trump organization, to do illegal internet hokey pokey to influence your dumb Nana’s vote. And Nana’s husband’s vote. And all her mah jongg group. And don’t forget your little brother.

Well! We don’t know whether our conspiracy theory is true (bet Robert Mueller does), but shit is finally hitting the fan on Cambridge Analytica, thank baby Jesus. It started Friday night, while we were distracted by Andrew McCabe and Stormy Daniels, when Facebook unceremoniously put CA in Facebook jail for misusing user data. How many people? Oh, just like 50 MILLION AMERICANS, which is about a quarter of American Facebook users. But why now, though? Why so suddenly? Did Facebook just come to this conclusion all by itself, or was this more of a “there is a whistleblower named Christopher Wylie who is about to fuck all our shit up” situation?

Christopher Wylie, who helped found Cambridge and worked there until late 2014, said of its leaders: “Rules don’t matter for them. For them, this is a war, and it’s all fair.”

“They want to fight a culture war in America,” he added. “Cambridge Analytica was supposed to be the arsenal of weapons to fight that culture war.”

TOTALLY NORMAL! (Wylie, by the way, has also been banned from Facebook, because both sides do it or something.)

The short version on how this worked was that CA got data on 270,000 Facebook users from a third party app developer, a Russian-American with Kremlin ties (of course) named Aleksandr Kogan (also now banned from FB, but he has since changed his name back to Kogan from “Dr. Spectre,” and no, that also is NOT A JOKE). Kogan nee Spectre is an “academic researcher” who made one of those doohickeys that is like “Answer these fifteen questions and we will tell you which Taylor Swift song you are!” kinds of things. Taking that data from the 270,000 users who clicked “Yes, this random app can pay me for my whole profile and also my credit card numbers if they want that!” and taking advantage of the fact that impressionable voters also don’t tend to have very good privacy settings, CA was able to harvest data on all those users’ friends as well — approximately 50,000,000 people, whose information the company has of course not gotten rid of, despite protests to the contrary. They reportedly have GIGABYTES of the shit.

(And we still don’t know if Russia laundered any other stolen voter data through Trump campaign intermediaries all the way over to CA, but it’s worth noting the campaign paid CA almost six million buckaroos for its work. We should also note that, according to Wylie, CA has psychological profiles of 230 million Americans.)

Taking this information, the company — which hired a few Americans, but was mostly made up of European Canadian British people, so hi there, foreign interference! — could then target those people with lies, damn lies, and fake news. Remember that only 270,000 of these people actually agreed to have their information shared, but that even they didn’t agree to have it sold to Cambridge Analytica and used to weaponize them in the election.

The purpose of all this?

Mr. Mercer […] believed a sophisticated data company could make him a kingmaker in Republican politics […]. Mr. Bannon was intrigued by the possibility of using personality profiling to shift America’s culture and rewire its politics[.]

As Wylie told reporter Carole Cadwalladr in The Guardian, he created “Steve Bannon’s psychological warfare mindfuck tool” for Bannon’s culture war to destroy America. And who brought CA on to the Trump campaign? Well, it had been on Ted Cruz’s campaign, but Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner, Corey Lewandowski, and Trump campaign digital guru Brad Parscale all played a part in getting CA’s special jizz all over Trump. And when Steve Bannon, who masterminded all this with Wylie, was brought on as Trump’s campaign chair a few months later, the circle was complete!

Cambridge Analytica is particularly in trouble right now because it appears its CEO Alexander Nix and other CA executives have lied their lying dicks off about the data they have, how they harvest it, and what they’ve used it for, in many hearings of America Congress and also England Congress, which is called “Parliament.” Facebook is also in big effing trouble with lawmakers in America and Britain for being so lax with its data, and is of course doing the “Who me?” song and dance it always does every single time questions like these come up about the 2016 election. Oh, also, Facebook threatened to sue the Observer/Guardian to keep them from publishing their bombshell story on Cambridge Analytica, so that’s cool.

Please click all our links if you want to go down the very interesting rabbit hole of Cambridge Analytica’s role in fucking the 2016 American elections in the ass. We will leave you with these two tidbits, to whet your whistle:

That time in 2014 Cambridge Analytica prepared a report for the second largest oil company in Russia, Lukoil, about the upcoming American primary elections.

In an email dated 17 July 2014, about the US presidential primaries, Nix wrote to Wylie: “We have been asked to write a memo to Lukoil (the Russian oil and gas company) to explain to them how our services are going to apply to the petroleum business. Nix said that “they understand behavioural microtargeting in the context of elections” but that they were “failing to make the connection between voters and their consumers”. The work, he said, would be “shared with the CEO of the business”, a former Soviet oil minister and associate of Putin, Vagit Alekperov.

“It didn’t make any sense to me,” says Wylie. “I didn’t understand either the email or the pitch presentation we did. Why would a Russian oil company want to target information on American voters?”

OH HUH. Wonder if the Russians weren’t actually trying to understand micro-targeting, but instead wanted that data for other reasons. OH HUH.

That time when Alexander Nix and Christopher Wylie, who is a gay, went to New York City to meet Rebekah Mercer, the wingnut dark empress of hell.

“She loved me. She was like, ‘Oh we need more of your type on our side!’”

Your type?

“The gays. She loved the gays. So did Steve [Bannon]. He saw us as early adopters. He figured, if you can get the gays on board, everyone else will follow. It’s why he was so into the whole Milo [Yiannopoulos] thing.”

WHOA. IF. TRUE.

But think about it, because it makes all the sense in the world. All good ad people know that in the US, style trends in America follow similar paths, and one of them is from homo to hetero. We thought it was hilariously pathetic, watching the Trump campaign desperately trying to court the gays, throwing parties for the gays at the Republican National Goddamn Convention, and so forth. Turns out it was part of a marketing plan! A really dumb marketing plan, but it was a plan!

State Rep. John Ray Clemmons is a Democrat in Tennessee’s House of Representatives, and he thought maybe, what with all the hate and division in our politics these days, it might be a good idea to reaffirm the state’s opposition to generally nasty people. So he introduced a resolution denouncing neo-Nazis and white supremacist groups and calling on law enforcement to make sure they’re not up to anything violent. It didn’t even name any particular groups. Here’s part of the text of his civic-minded resolution, written in reaction to last year’s hate rally in Charlottesville, Virginia:

“[W]e urge law enforcement to recognize these white nationalist and neo-Nazi groups as terrorist organizations and to pursue the criminal elements of these domestic terrorist organizations in the same manner and with the same fervor used to protect the United States from other manifestations of terrorism.”

It took all of 36 seconds to be shot down by the House State Government Subcommittee last week. The single Democrat on the committee, state Rep. Darren Jernigan, made a motion to discuss Clemmons’s resolution. After none of the four Republicans on the committee would second the motion, the chair, Bill Sanderson, gaveled the resolution to oblivion and the committee moved on to other business. No second, no further consideration, no vote on condemning neo-Nazis and white nationalists.

Ramsey says he and his fellow legislators “condemn white supremacy and other hate groups.” The issue, is “we have no real definition for a white nationalist or neo-Nazi group.”

“We have no expertise on it,” Ramsey says. “How could we determine these groups are terrorists? We don’t know the federal guidelines on terrorism.”

Heavens, it sure would be inadvisable to rush in and condemn Nazism without really knowing for certain what a “Nazi” is. Or a “white nationalist.” Are we even sure that’s bad?

Ramsey went on to explain that some people just seem like maybe they’re out to stir up trouble, you see:

Many of these resolutions can be divisive and embarrass one side of membership or the other. That’s how we felt about this one. We felt it needed to be more detailed and not so general,

Mercy sakes, you certainly wouldn’t want to go around bad-mouthing “white nationalists,” now would you? After all, what if someone just really loves America a lot, and is white? Are you going to call that person bad, or compare a patriot to a Nazi (if that’s a bad thing either)?

It is possible the committee could reconsider the resolution if the language were re-worked, maybe, so that it’s absolutely clear just which particularly bad kinds of “Nazis” were being condemned. Probably the ones that want to take away your guns and institute socialized medicine, because those are the worst.

]]>https://wonkette.com/631438/tennessee-republicans-pretty-sure-nazi-lives-matter-too/feed317Slumlord Jared Kushner Gave Rats To Your Nanahttps://wonkette.com/631430/slumlord-jared-kushner-gave-rats-to-your-nana
https://wonkette.com/631430/slumlord-jared-kushner-gave-rats-to-your-nana#commentsMon, 19 Mar 2018 15:46:49 +0000https://wonkette.com/?p=631430On the bright side, Queens has very few sawmills where damsels can be tied to logs.

A great big investigative piece by the Associated Press reveals that while Jared Kushner was running the Kushner Companies, the New York developer regularly used fake documents and harassment to drive out tenants from rent-regulated apartments so the company could rent to new folks at a much higher rate and make all sorts of ill-gotten money. As a f’rinstance, the company bought three apartment buildings in Queens in 2015 where most of the tenants had such rent protections. A couple years later, the Kushner Companies sold the buildings for almost a 50 percent profit, $60 million dollars. The paperwork filed with the city said not a single resident of the buildings was protected by rent regulations. Not just in those three buildings, but in any of the dozens of buildings they owned.

Surprise! Tax records showed the company actually had hundreds of tenants who should have been protected. It’s a very nice scam, and while it was illegal as all hell, falsifying the paperwork is a misdemeanor, and the city generally deals with violations by letting the developer file an amended document, sometimes a year or two after the affected tenants were forced out and their apartments let out for much more money.

Hey, filing an amended document to correct false information in an earlier version? That sounds awfully familiar! If Jared ever gets nailed for lying on his security clearance application(s), get ready for him to point his finger at New York housing authorities and cry, “It was you! I learned it from YOU!”

Needless to say, Jared himself was careful to not put his own signature on any of the fake paperwork, but some of the forms falsely claiming buildings had zero rent-regulated tenants were signed by other high-ranking executives, including the chief operating officer. And, as with other stories of the Kushners’ sleazy real estate shenanigans, it’s worth noting such scammy business practices are far from unique to the Kushner companies — developers all over New York and in other cities are scum too. But those other scummy developers don’t have anyone from their head offices advising the “president” on US government policy.

Back to those Kushner buildings all over New York City:

For the three Queens buildings in the borough’s Astoria neighborhood, the Kushner Cos. checked a box on construction permit applications in 2015 that indicated the buildings had zero rent-regulated tenants. Tax records filed a few months later showed the company inherited as many as 94 rent-regulated units from the previous owner.

In all, Housing Rights Initiative found the Kushner Cos. filed at least 80 false applications for construction permits in 34 buildings across New York City from 2013 to 2016, all of them indicating there were no rent-regulated tenants. Instead, tax documents show there were more than 300 rent-regulated units.

Fine, but so what? What would have been different if the company had properly noted there were rent-regulated units? Ah, well, for one thing, if that box had been checked, the city would have sent out inspectors to look closely at what construction crews were doing at the Kushner properties, because the city doesn’t want people being harassed out of their protected apartments by messy construction, hammering at weird hours, Pied Piper trains of rats, that sort of thing:

Instead, current and former tenants of the Queens buildings told the AP that they were subjected to extensive construction, with banging, drilling, dust and leaking water that they believe were part of targeted harassment to get them to leave and clear the way for higher-paying renters.

“It was noisy, there were complaints, I got mice,” said mailman Rudolph Romano, adding that he also bristled at a 60 percent rent increase, a hike the Kushner Cos. contends was initiated by the previous landord. “They cleaned the place out. I watched the whole building leave.”

Imagine that! As we like to say, go read the whole thing, because holy crap, those bastards. While many people just gave up and moved out, some went to court, like the postal worker did, or like Mary Ann Siwek, a nice lady who lives on Social Security and said the noise and mess were constant, with “drilling, drilling. … You heard the drilling in the middle of night[.]” And rats in her apartment, from an abandoned building next door. A man offered Siwek $10,000 to get her to move out, but she sued instead, and was awarded a year of free rent, and a new refrigerator.

Ritchie Torres, a member of the New York City Council, said the Kushners “appear to be engaging in what I call the weaponization of construction.” He plans an investigation into scammy construction applications.

Needless to say, the Kushner Companies have issued a statement saying they’re just shocked that anyone would think they’ve ever done anything that wasn’t completely aboveboard, that they outsource their documentations to an outside company, and “if mistakes or violations are identified, corrective action is taken immediately.” Like a year or so after the trouble-making tenants are gone and the units rented at a much more advantageous rate.

As we say, the sleazy practices alleged in the AP story don’t seem to be unique to the Kushners — Donald Trump himself once tried to force rent-controlled tenants out of one of his own luxury buildings by benevolently suggesting he’d move homeless people into vacant units, subsidized by the city — so if anything, his prominent (for now?) job may well bring attention to a serious problem in housing policy. Next, he’ll probably demand some kind of award for helping us notice.

]]>https://wonkette.com/631430/slumlord-jared-kushner-gave-rats-to-your-nana/feed430It’s Always Time To March On Drinking Liberally In Philadelphiahttps://wonkette.com/631421/its-always-time-to-march-on-drinking-liberally-in-philadelphia
https://wonkette.com/631421/its-always-time-to-march-on-drinking-liberally-in-philadelphia#commentsMon, 19 Mar 2018 15:00:35 +0000https://wonkette.com/?p=631421IT IS A BIG YELLOW BIRD. DO YOU GET IT? TELL ME IF YOU GET IT.

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. Give me liberty or give me beer! Prepare ye and put on your combat boots, because it is time once again to march on the Philadelphia “Drinking Liberally” chapter and invade it and stuff and basically show up and buy them some pitchers, it is just how we do.

BROOKLYN, NY. Join us at your comrade Erin’s restaurant Grindhaus in the Red Hook neighborhood! Again, appetizers on me, drinks out of your own wallet. Thurs., March 22, I think maybe 7 p.m.

Washington DC! We’re buying you pizza somewhere Fri., March 23, to carbo load for the Teens March for Our Lives, then meeting you somewhere else Saturday morning!

Baltimore, Maryland! Holy Frijoles, 4 to 7 p.m.! Sun., March 25. Are you in Baltimore? Five Dollar Feminist has pneumonia OH NO and we will not be sleeping in her driveway. Offer up yours instead at rebecca at wonkette dot com!

Morgantown, West Virginia! Let us wipe off the coal dust and kiss you on your FED UP faces! Mon., March 26. And then …

Lexington, Kentucky!

Definitely Indianapolis!

Looks like Kansas City!

And then Denver!

Maybe Wyoming? We got anyone in Wyoming? Email me “I live in Wyoming.” We got one guy so far who’s emailed I LIVE IN WYOMING. Maybe we will stop and see him! Okay we love you bye.

Seeing your beautiful faces has been the highlight of a very dumb year. Thank you for sending us to see all you all! And we’ll see you at the Teens’ March for Our Lives! AND BEYOND!